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Monday, November 25, 2013

Thankful for Books

I am thankful every day for many wonderful things in my life. But during this special season of Thanksgiving, I want to focus on thankfulness for books. I am thankful my dad was an avid reader and passed that love to me. I’m thankful for the bookmobile, the libraries and the bookstores that have provided me with wonderful avenues of adventure throughout my life. And, I’m thankful for the gift I’ve been given to write books.

• To escape your normal life.
• To travel to real destinations.
• To explore new worlds.
• To imagine more than you could on your own
• To dream a new life.
• To know more than you could learn on your own.
• To learn what you don’t know.
• To learn what you do know.
• To discover something extraordinary.
• To meet incredible characters.

What are some of your reasons to read?

A native Montanan, Heidi M. Thomasnow lives in North-central Arizona. Her first novel, Cowgirl Dreams, is based on her grandmother, and the sequel, Follow the Dream, won the national WILLA Award. The next book in the series, Dare to Dream, will be published in May 2014. Heidi has a degree in journalism, a certificate in fiction writing, and is a member of Northwest Independent Editors Guild. She teaches writing and edits, blogs, and is working on the next books in her “Dare to Dream” series.

That's why I read these days - so analyze what works for me in other fiction and to fact-check. But I've read for many other reasons in my life including pure escape when I was a child and self improvement as a young woman. I also read how-to related to crafts, and that's ongoing and relentless!

Reading rescued my fate. Books taught me that there was a different world out there and that people could overcome their upbringing to choose the life they wanted. I identified with heroes who stood alone to fight great odds. Books have comforted me when times got rough. They have given me critical information when I needed it. They are my drug of choice which made it easy to refuse other types of self-medication. Without books, I would not be who I am today.

I am a bit like Diana. Reading was always an escape from a not-so-happy childhood, and I loved that stories could take a reader into so many new places. I also agree with Larry about how reading helps us become better writers.

Yeah, since Larry posted, I've been thinking about the segue from pure escape as a child to research for my own writing right now. Interestingly, I'm experience the escape factor in my writing this NaNoWriMo season - I'm rather liking the feeling. :)

I read to enter into experience more deeply than the rapidity of actual events often allows. This is also why I write. What reading allows me that my own writing can't is a different lens through which to view the experience—one I might never have thought of.

Until I started writing, I read to put myself in the world of the author's characters. However, it's becoming harder and harder to turn off the internal editor, and it now takes a much more compelling book to engross me. Of course, there are still those that can totally remove me from my world, and I treasure those.

I've been reading since I was very young -- maybe four years old -- and began writing poetry before I learned to write in cursive. To this day, nothing can take the place of a great book. And as noted in other comments, great books invariably teach the writer something valuable to improve his/her own writing. The poem below was written to celebrate the opening of an indie bookstore in western Colorado. Apologies for the redundancy if I've shared this before, but it says it all about how much I love a good book.

BOOKS

Where can you find the very best zoo?Where can you learn exactly how to?Where can you plan a flight to the moon?Where can you seek the ways of the loon?

Where can you take a trip to the past?Where can you join a big Broadway cast?Where can you play in a Wild West show?Where can you go that no one did go?

Where can you find unbeatable strength?Where can you travel both breadth and length?Where can you meet the great and the small?Where can you grow to be ten feet tall?

Where can you learn how to get wealthy?Where can you find ways to grow healthy?Where can you walk where ancestors trod?Or sail with Wynken, Blynken, and Nod?

You might be very surprised to knowThat no matter where you want to go,You have only to open a book—So sit down now and take a quick look.

You can be mighty, you can be meek,You can be plain, or you can be chic;It makes no matter the way you choose,You decide whether you win or lose.

When you read a book, you grow inside,Expand horizons, relish the ride;Hitch your wagon to a shooting star—Who you want to be is who you are.

Read to your parents, read to your child,Read to yourself, by books be beguiled;Travel the world, the universe grand,Your passport is the book in your hand.

I'm actually slightly dyslexic ... so reading is somewhat laborious to me ... yet, I always have a book going ... I do enjoy getting lost in a good story ... beats the heck out of getting lost in the world.

All of the above, Heidi. I read fiction in most genres and read quite a bit of non-fiction, too. One of the worst moments in my childhood was when I realized I could never read all the books in the world. :D